A student in the creative writing class I’m in wrote a short story from the perspective of a young man who sexually assaults his classmate. It is a well-written account of the build-up to the rape. The reader sees the narrator, Ben, try to weave unreliable logic together in order to justify his actions. He reminds himself that he cares about his classmate, that they are in love. In reality the “couple” had only shared a few sentences before the night began. At the end of the workshop, another classmate commented that she really liked the original point of view it was written in. The writer responded that she had written a first draft of the piece from the victim’s point of view, but that she thought that had been done before, so she rewrote it from the attacker’s point of view. The teacher added, almost leaping across the table how happy she was for making that change.
“Thank you!” She exclaimed. “I have found that the female’s point of view is so over-written. I commend you for taking on a different perspective.” There were a series of other comments from students agreeing with what my teacher said. Continue reading “Are Politics Personal?”